A nice surprise
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Today was another practice session at the Aon building in downtown L.A. Just a little climb up the stairs from the 4th floor to the 60th. Sounds simple. How hard could it be?
For some reason, I was having a hard time getting into the right mental state for this. All the way downtown on the train, I kept wondering if this was a good idea. A lot of this was because of my experience doing this last week.
When I got to the building, I checked in and headed up to the start of the stairs. There was a big group there to do it. I let almost all of them go ahead of me. I figured that having some people to catch might help me to get motivated. I stood at the bottom, looking up the stairs, and I felt a bit like this:
see more ICHC After Dark
Finally, I couldn’t procrastinate any more. It was time to do it. I’d decided to try an experiment this time. I wear a small metronome to use for setting my pace. I’ve noticed that the first 20-25 floors, I have to hold back a bit to keep on pace, and so today I decided that I was going to go without it for the first half of the climb. I’ve done enough of these things now that I know not to make the novice mistake of starting out too fast. But at the same time, I figured I might be able to get a good start on the climb by going a little faster at the start.
When I got to 32, I could tell I was starting to slow down. That was the halfway point, and I turned on the metronome. I immediately had to speed up a tiny bit to keep up with it. But that little beep in my ear helps to focus and keep going. I even managed a small burst of speed at the end, from 58 to 60. I stumbled out on the 60th floor and laid down on the concrete. Lots of top stair climbers lie down on the floor at the finish, so I thought I’d try it.
When I had a look at my watch, I was pleasantly surprised to see that I’d done it in 10:21, which is two seconds faster than my previous best time for this climb. So in the end, I’m glad that hauled myself downtown to do it.
